User:Torley Linden/Vidtut ideas/2008-03-19

This page is for scribbling ideas for Torley's Video Tutorials, including the omnifriendly "Tip of the Week" series. Feel free to add your own suggestions — if this page gets too long, we may need to organize it better, but for now, go wild using the format below:

=== [TITLE OF SUGGESTED TIP] ===

* [FINER DETAILS]

* [MORE FINER DETAILS]

And if you'd rather not edit this page but still wanna let me know your video tutorial suggestions, please email me: torley at lindenlab dot com with the subject line "Video Tutorials"!

More land options

Showing land borders and the meaning of the different colors red/orange/yellow/green

These land borders can be very useful for your SL experience. Can't script/rez on a piece of land? go to the neighbours. Looking for a nice plot to purchase? Look for those yellow borders! How big is your land, and how far can you move that wall? Look at landborders again!

Setting land options. I often run into people who complain about running into lots of garbage that others leave on their land. A quick run through the various land options usually solves their problems.

How to own land

Finding land for sale.

Buy the Land

Explain tier and prim allowance.

Explain the difference between Linden owned mainland and private estates.

How to buy a private estate (at least where to find infos about that - estate tools might be interessting, but it would cover only a few residents).

MISC

How to start your own wiki page

This would primarily be web-based and showcase usefulness that most Resis don't know about. For example, User:Tid_Kidd.

Show simple wiki editing. (I should look for a richer, easier editor tho.)

Emphasize that it acts as an extended profile and can be linked to from inworld.

SL Etiquette

"SLEtiquette" is a very dear subject to me, because these are "guidelines/rules" that experienced Residents may expect a newcomer to "get" right away without explaining, causing considerable discouragement in some cases. Yes, please add more examples, this could be humorous and informational. --Torley

(Torley, I will add more to this short list as I think of more etiquette topics!! Others, feel free to edit!)

Flying or standing too close to a stranger--or their homes.

SHOUTING way too often.

How to get help

I've actually had some chats with our Volunteer Team about this. Re: "show at newbie friendly areas", that sounds like a big gap that needs to be filled because I feel this isn't being communicated well enough. --Torley

Cover mentors and the support portal

Show examples IMing mentors, lindens or using the support portal..

Video capture of web browser and URLs.

Make the very strong point that Linden's are VERY BUSY.

This would be useful to show at newbie friendly areas.

Useful Debug Settings

Can you please give me more details on ImagePipelineUseHTTP? Not sure about that (does it noticeably effect higher-end PCs?), but "FolderAutoOpenDelay" sounds like it could be a quick, eclectic Tip of the Week. I like it. --Torley

From what I've been able to gather, ImagePipelineUseHTTP changes the mechanism that the Viewer uses to download the textures. It is turned off by default. I did find this reference to it which implies it's a new feature, perhaps not yet fully implemented? Not having a high end machine, I can't tell if it's noticable on them, but I know that it helps me and it's helped a friend who has a PC on the lower end of what can run SL. --Sougent

ImagePipelineUseHTTP - which give a noticible speedup of texture rezzing on lower end PC's

FolderAutoOpenDelay - which will slow down how quickly the inventory folders open when you're dragging and dropping (which is very irritating, btw).

FontMonospace - adjusts the size of the font used in the script editor

Any others?

How do they look so good? Basics of Skins and Clothing

At LL, we term this area "NUE" — New User Experience. I'd like to take on the basics and move into the more fancy bits (like tinies). I'm also keeping in close contact with our Resident Experience Team about a better selection of default avatars at signup. --Torley

Might I suggest soliciting some of the designers of Second Life for "New User Packs" that can be used to create a better selection of default avatars? I know that some of them already have such packs that they give away, as do private citizens who carry around packages of freebie stuff to give out to new folks that they run into in order to help them out. Perhaps a contest to create a series of new default avatars could be held with the winners replacing the current selection? --Sougent

One of the things I constantly hear "old folk" say is, when I was a newbie I would see all these people who looked so much better than I, and didn't understand how they did it until "someone" took me by the hand and showed me about skins and stuff.

Cover the basics on what a skin is, why it looks better than the built in stuff, where to find them (freebies and purchasing) and how to put them on.

Cover the basics of prim hair, what it is and how to find it and put it on.

Cover the basics of clothing, how it works in layers. How prim attachments are used for belts and shoes and jewelry.

Cover some of the unique avatar options such as tinies, furries, and some of the other options for those who want to have fun with their avatar.

Voice and How to Use It

I've been in touch with our Voice Team about future changes, which is still influx. When it seems like these will reasonably be stable for awhile, I'd like to get into this — part of the technical prob doing this is the fact I record my vidtut, it captures my voice on the mic so I can't actively speak inworld, so I may have to do editing tricks. (A worthy challenge.) The "etiquette" part is OH SO TRUE! Ha. --Torley

Cover running through the Voice settings in preferences, using the wizard to set it up.

Cover how to use the Active Speakers list

Cover how to turn up an individual speakers volume if they are hard to hear.

Voice gestures, how to use the ones in the Library.

Cover etiquette like closing ones mike when eating, breathing and otherwise not talking. Also keeping an eye regular chat and not being a zombie to those not using Voice.

For a better Chat-Experiance (was: Conference Chat)

The way it's currently designed is so unintuitive that I wish we had a better UI altogether. I don't know when that's happening, tho, so in the meantime, good idea! --Torley

Repeat lines with: CTRL + UP

CTRL + ENTER for shout ... and tell them NOT to shout :)

How to enable chatlogs and the timestamps.

Where to find the chatlogs on the harddrive and how to find specific lines with a simple texteditor.

(Maybe how to put them back into a notecard? People often do this.)

Explain the callingcards and how to give them to other residents

How to start the conference: Put cards in a new folder, rightclick and choose "Start Conference"

Alternative way: CTRL select from your friendslist and start the conference with IM/call button (Was this way added lately?)

Why can't I enter?

Explain why land entry might be resticted.

How to use Acces Tab in Land Info Window

Cover what "Payment Info Used" and the new age verification means.

Limit to group access only

How to sell a pass and what this means.

How to freeze, eject and ban from your land.

Explain the difference between estate and parcel ban.

Using the Map Window

Thanx for the suggestions! Some of this has been covered in smaller chunks: TotW #23 is all about SLURLs. Mini-Map ToTW to come; "Landmarks & Teleporting" is in the Basics series. One for the World Map would be good, tho. - Torley on 2008-02-24 @ 10:54 AM PST

Object and Terrain Tab

Explain the funky icons in the top right.

Find friends on the world map.

How to allow a friend beeing seen in the map.

Organizing landmarks

Searching a sim

Give an example what "Copy SLURL to clipboard" means.

Hot to set the home position.

Explain where the big continents are

Basics of scripting

Scripting seems to be a big mystery for many people but it isnt. A good introduction of the basics might help many to begin a scripting career =)

Explain how scripts work (serverbased little programms)

Starting with the default script in a prim

Explain the script editor window.

Explain the very basics of syntax (brackets, semicolons).

Do a very very basic script: Give a Notecard on click or set floating text.

Give an overview of cool resources where to find more script related material inworld and on the web.

How to move around

Finished as part of basics series, which is on my YouTube page and awaits formal release as part of orientation enhancements. Didn't cover advanced movement, but can do that later. - Torley on 2008-02-24 @ 10:51 AM PST

Definite useful basics, some of which (like camera control) I previously touched on in a not-so-single-themed way. I'm not sure this would be a "Tip of the Week" since it's very "bread and butter", but as I expand my involvement with vidtuts, it'd be well-included in the Knowledge Base. --Torley

Walking/Flying with arrow keys and keyboard

Walking/Flying using Mouselook

Walking/Flying by grabbing avatar with mouse and using mouse to steer and arros to walk forward/back and to the sides.

When each is useful (mouselook when manuvering around builds that are more cramped or crowds) and also comment on situations where one might want to stand in place and just cam around, as one might while shopping.

How to use streaming parcel media

Finished internally. It'll be released to public soon. - Torley on 2008-02-24 @ 10:49 AM PST

This one keeps coming up, it's very popular. I previously wrote a text-and-pix tutorial on how to convert YouTube videos for SL, but it's outdated — Vixy.net is unreliable now, and I've switched to iDesktop.tv. I should, at the very least, update it and provide pointers to such tools. --Torley

Cover music + movies.

Show examples of playing .MP3s and .MOVs.

Video capture of web browser and URLs.

Make the very strong point that Linden Lab does not store what's streamed, we merely pass it along from an external webserver.

Specifically useful would be the ability to watch youtube videos in SL --> how to convert .flv to .mov or .mp4 (or how to directly stream youtube - though I guess converting and storing on own webserver is more likely)

How to login with multiple accounts

DONE as #17, didn't cover security implications but pointed to more command line switches. I do wish the cross-platform ways to do it were more similar, I'm a Mac fan too (and curious about Linux) and didn't want to leave anyone out. --Torley

Explain command line parameters briefly.

Show Second Life shortcut on desktop. (This will be Windows-specific, but in the text part of the blog post, there should be a link to Mac + Linux info.)

Also show how to login automatically but if I do this, BE VERY SURE to explain security risks involved.

Launch two viewers and show them both running momentarily.

Clarify that you need a powerful computer to run multiple accounts if you don't minimize!

Working with Sculpted Prims

Have you seen Vlad Bjornson's Shiny Life tutorials? They're on the main Video Tutorials page and he does cover sculpties. Also, see Sculpted Prims. Thanks for the suggestion! --Torley

What is a Sculpted Prim...what makes it different from the other shapes

How do you Change its Shape

How do you Change its Texture

I have scoured the WIKI and cannot find any topics on Sculpted prims

Cover Other Ctrl+Shift number screens

Some of this stuff I would hope is superceded by more user-friendly features. As we've seen from the Texture Console breakdown, it can be really intimidating and not terribly practical. So it seems we need better performance-diagnosis tools first of all. --Torley

Cover the other statistical/debug screens.

CTRL+SHIFT+2 - look at all the pretty colors.....what is this all telling us?

CTRL+SHIFT+3 - Textures Downloading, what it all means, why there are so many showing downloading even when everything appears to be rezzed already.

CTRL+SHIFT+4 - The console, why you might want to look at it when there are problems, what kind of information is there for the young and geeky.